Many packaging applications, especially food packaging, require or benefit from the use of bags made from various thermoplastic materials and structures. Examples of commercial bags include heat shrinkable bags supplied by Cryovac, Inc.
These bags are commonly used in large-scale cheese packaging systems where production speed and efficiency are important.
At the loading station of a conventional system, each bag is opened, and an article such as a 3 to 11 lb. block of Italian cheese or other food product is pushed through a set of product guides and into the bag. The pushing operation can be done manually, or mechanically. Mechanical pushers typically operate in a reciprocal motion.
One inherent problem in this arrangement is that the presence of the pusher in the area of the product guides, and sometimes within the bag opening during part of the loading cycle, interferes with the staging of subsequent product. The pusher must be retracted in a reciprocal motion before the next product unit can be advanced to the next bag. This slows the bag loading operation.
It is desirable to provide a method and apparatus which avoids this problem.